Start with a number followed by a nifty subject area full of tips.

Here are some useful examples:

20 Fantastic Resources For User Experience Know How:
http://www.inspiredm.com/2009/05/15/ux-madness-20-fantastic-resources-for-user-experience-know-how/

50 iPhone Apps for Web Designers and Developers
http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/iphone-roundups/50-iphone-apps-for-web-designers-developers/

20 Tools to Make the life of a Web Developer Easier
http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/20-tools-to-make-the-life-of-a-web-developer-easier/

25 Most Useful Blogs for web design and development
http://www.webappers.com/2009/04/06/25-most-useful-blogs-for-web-design-development/

50 Great Examples of Data Visualizations
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visualization/

5 impressive Mashups of Twitter and Flickr
http://mashable.com/2009/05/11/twitter-flickr-mashups/

30 days to become a freelancer
http://www.skelliewag.org/30-days-to-become-a-freelancer-961.htm

Trend spotting a fashion that is beginning to get irritating.

News Limited has launched a new site called “The Punch” aimed at news opinion and debate. Launched only two days ago this site already claims to be “Australia’s best conversation”.

The Punch is primarily presented in a blog format which I always think is much more ‘new media’ than the traditional online newspaper format which dictates what editors think you should be reading about, rather than what is just in, most viewed, or most commented on – all formats which lend to an event based or audience driven information hierarchy.

This effort has left me very curious about News Ltd’s broader strategy. They link to their competitors, twitter and even go as far as presenting some of their harshest critics in the “Sites We Like – our web survival guide.” Perhaps someone over there actually gets this web thing!?

Then sigh, I read they will be considering a subscription model down the track.

And I hear – they are not paying contributors. Ho hum. Could it be that big corp got sold on the idea that this awesome new media format could open up opportunities to advertise all over free contributions? Equaling low cost (hopefully), high profits (hopefully) and all off the backs of other people’s good will? This is the primary lash back or concern being talked about today – and rightly so.

So, what are the other traditional players doing? Hmmm…  Now, I know there are some really smart people at News, but I also know it is harder to get those agendas up the reporting lines. So, well done.

At any rate it’s very interesting that they have decided to build a more collaborate offering off their traditional platform, although I know not user groups will see News Ltd as a trustworthy source to such a service. So, what are people saying about it on twitter?

What others are saying:
Punch no Knockout for Journalism

Crickey Counterpoint: two verdicts

@uxrob: News launches http://www.thepunch.com.au/ “Australia’s best conversation”. Nice idea but feels like a flame war waiting to happen.

@mpesce Quoth Crikey: Opinion is not journalism.” I call bullshit. Journalism has always been opinion. Sooner we face that, the better.

Totally agree – controversial launch…  I’m sure the debate will be hot and agendas will be transparent. I’m going to watch and read more. The idea is good, the murdoch aspect is one more agenda among many in this rapidly changing media landscape of survival during the death of print and the vocal control this industry once had. Another addition to conversation is always good by me…

Really keen to learn more about this:

http://www.thepunch.com.au/

Ben Self is the founder of Blue State Digital which was responsible for the online social media activities that helped fundraise millions of dollars for the Obama campaign to presidency. As he is introduced at Fairfax Digital’s Media09, Ben Self is credited with engaging the largest civic involvement in US politics in history. The Obama campaign  is the most successful start up in internet history to date.

Self explains that Obama knew he was never going to raise money for his campaign in the traditional way.

“What Obama did,” Self says “was to gather 10,000 people together at a rally and ask each and every one of them to use their mobile phones to sms a number and pledge five bucks”. Certainly not a big ask but there you have it – $50,000 in 50 seconds.

This sort of activity is a great example of how Obama focused on a grass roots campaign rather than doing the traditional fancy dinner party for maximum donations of $2300. Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Pickard, Head of Communities & User Experience – The Guardian (London)

There are many ways for users to consume content online, begins Pickard. They consume, react, curate and create. Unfortunately we spend most of our time and efforts engaging them to consume and not enough engaging users to react, curate or create.

UCG or user generated content is considered a pretty dry term by Meg, she’d prefer to think of it as users expressing themselves about stuff they are passionate about.

People also tend to get social media and social networking confused. To often the media tends to provide social media tools in a separate environment to the content, rather than having that engagement interacting with the content.

Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Pickard, Head of Communities & User Experience – The Guardian (London)

…on, developments at the guardian.co.uk, how to receive user feedback and designing for your mum.

Life at the Guardian

Meg jokingly calls her self an ‘insultant’ for the Guardian (internal consultant), but in all seriousness highlights the value of having someone responsible for focusing on the user agenda, constantly asking ‘why are we doing this?’ and ‘why would people want that?’. If you don’t know what your really asking of your users, then they most certainly won’t get it either.

Meg describes her job as understanding cultures and spotting patterns of which her background in anthropology is proving useful.

Innovation

The web has changed and now there is a much greater desire to be “of the web and not just on it.”

Some of the things Meg and the Guardian team have been thinking a lot is new ways for streams of information to talk to one another.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nic Newman, BBC Future Media and Technology at Media 09

iPlayer moto: “Making the unmissable, unmissable”

iPhone users are using their iphone 25x more than smart phone users to access the internet.

Looking at the history of the web, in 1994 the goal was for companies to have an online presence, in 2007 they were offering support to their linear media and in 2009 and beyond we will see much more made for web content that is rich, dynamic and on demand.

2007 -2008 showed the tipping point for many online activities including the iPhone (mobile interaction), social media went mainstream (Barak Obama on twitter) and video on demand grew. BBCs own, iPlayer went from launch to 300 million views in just one year. Read the rest of this entry »

Carolyn Little, Guardian News and Media North America at Media O9

Now is the age of free. People expect not to pay.

Newspapers need to do more than repackage their content for online purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah.

The media really love to focus on the scare stuff when it comes to social media… but I thought you would be interested in this one as it is quite an extensive article about trolling – hammed to the max in the morbidity of death and anonymous cruelty. Another example of focusing on the negatives to convince us that connectivity is a scary thing? Probably…

“That the Internet is now capacious enough to host an entire subculture of users who enjoy undermining its founding values is yet another symptom of its phenomenal success. It may not be a bad thing that the least-mature users have built remote ghettos of anonymity where the malice is usually intramural.”- http://tinyurl.com/trollNYT

Also – interesting stuff around unenforceable legislation and the ungovernable…

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Pesce is always an interesting listen – he cases topics at hand in real world examples which are really engaging.

All the Friends I’ve Never Met details how a group of bloggers took down the US Attorney General and how Twitter informed him of the recent earthquake in China before it hit the wire. Great inspiring examples of social media as hyper-connected and powerful information sources.

Excellent use of 15 minutes of your day.

A little humor pre serious reading… http://www.flickr.com/photos/arbernaut/2476955162/in/set-72157604470275439/

Check out:

• State of the media 2008
• Politics 2.0
• Futureofjournalism.org.au